Vik asked guests to send in their best Lost Voodoo Episode experiences. The winner received a set of the Robert Drasnin and Lest Baxter CDs from Dionysus. This story from David Smay so astounded the staff of Vik's it was voted winner hands down!
A few years back I took in the Roxie Theater's double bill of Val Lewton's classic mysterioso horror movies for RKO. I was familiar with his work, but this would be showing the legendary GHOST SHIP - the print had just been rediscovered after 30 years. Thoroughly enjoying the first feature (fog, ghosts, looming shadows and a Calypso singer!), I decided to stay for the second feature even though I had seen it many times before - I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE.
Slowly I fell under the enchantment of this mesmerizing movie (a voodoo remake of JANE EYRE - my idea of high style), aided in no small part by the bottle of Cuban rum I had smuggled into the Roxie. Through two features I resolutely spiked my coke with 151 and by the time of the hypnotic climax I was thoroughly in the sway of the drums drums drums drums.
I staggered out of the Roxie headed for Dr. Bombay's but became strangely turned around. I found myself in a small alley way and I could hear the distant sound of congas. Wandering down the alley, I found myself in a part of the Mission I wasn't familiar with. The drums pounded into the night from an old warehouse - outside were crates filled with...was that a rooster? I suspected that I had stumbled onto an illegal cockfight. If only I had been so lucky.
A door was open, light and noise and the incessant drums spilled out of it. I slid along the wall and as I tried to peak through the opening I fell into the room. What I had thought was a wall was the other half of a double door. The drums stopped. The man holding a rooster by his throat and a knife in his other hand stopped. A crowd of faces turned to stare at me. I dusted myself off and with all the dignity I could muster I said, "Hell, this isn't Voudon - this is Santeria. An entirely different syncretic religion." The man with the chicken pointed his exceptionally large and sharp knife in my direction. The light glinted off it dazzling my eyes. A slow drumbeat started. The light...flashing. The drums. The people surrounding me. It seemed that I was dancing. And that's the last thing I remember.
Six weeks later I woke up in a cheap motel in Tiajuana. I had two days of
stubble, a towering bouffant hairdo and on my ass was a tattoo of the USC
mascot. I showered (shampooed three times) and snuck out without paying.
Hitched my way back to L.A. I was sitting there in the Los Angeles train
station, waiting for the Pacific Express to SF when a man tapped me on the
shoulder. "Hey kid, you look like you've had a rough time - let me buy you a
sandwich." He took me across the street and we had French Dips at
Phillippe's. I told him my story (leaving out the part about the bouffant)
and he seemed especially intrigued by the drums. "What was that rhythm,
again?" he'd ask and have me tap it out on the counter. He got me on the
train, and I told him I'd pay him back for the sandwich. He said it was no
problem, but I insisted so he gave me his card: Bob Drasnin, Executive
Director of Music, CBS.
